One of my aunts died in 1996. As her executor I used my address as hers after she passed. I still get multiple solicitations! At least the phone calls stopped about five years ago.

After Hurricane Harvey we donated to the Houston Food Bank. I think their website said they would not sell or share our address with anyone. So far as I can tell, that's been true and I hope it will remain so.

Options for giving.
 

The principal (largest) NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) which are to be found at disaster sites, particularly after hurricanes, are the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.

The organizations cooperate closely, with the Red Cross providing people to operate relocation shelters; the Salvation Army obtaining foodstuffs; and the Southern Baptists processing the food into meals for delivery to the shelters.

All three organizations depend heavily on volunteers, but while the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptists have small professional staffs that receive moderate salaries, the Red Cross has been shown to have a greatly expanded staff and very high salaries at the top levels.

But, to be fair to the Red Cross, their top tier people are running a very large organization that engages in many tasks beyond responding to major disasters. It is possibly under-reported that in urban areas where structure fires displace families out of their homes, the Red Cross often arranges temporary housing, food, and clothing for the displaced.

In addition to food preparation, the Southern Baptists have chain saw teams to clear fallen trees off of houses and roads; "blue tarp" teams to put protective tarps on damaged roofs; "mud out" teams to clean up flooded homes, mobile sanitation trailers with toilets, showers and clothes washers and dryers, and Communications Teams using ham radio equipment in areas where normal communications systems have been disabled. To minimize operational costs they usually sleep in local Baptist churches in the disaster area.

Unlike the Red Cross and Salvation Army, the Southern Baptists do not solicit operating funds from the general public, but rather self-fund their efforts. They also never accept financial gifts from the people who they help.

If someone wants to contribute to the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Ministry it can be done through a local Southern Baptist church or on the Internet.

Disaster Relief Overview |
NAMB

I donated to AmeriCares after the hurricane hit Puerto Rico and never got solicitations from any other charity. Red Cross is of the worst for % of dollars received actually getting to the people you're trying to help. Donate blood there, but find a better run charity for other things. Oxfam is a good international one.

Run any charity through the web site Charity Navigator before donating. They rate charities as to how well they're run and what percentage of your dollars actually gets to the people.

In 2015 that small amount was 90%.

In recent years, the Red Cross' fundraising expenses alone have been as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar, nearly three times the nine cents in overhead claimed by their CEO. In the past five years, fundraising expenses have averaged 17 cents per donated dollar. (I did not bold those words.)

Here is an easy-to-read comparison chart of five charities from charitynavigator.org.
Charity Navigator - Compare Charities
You can check many charities on this site.

I think the Red Cross is an important organization for the collection of blood. I give them blood but put my charitable dollars elsewhere. For instance, 98.5% of AmeriCare's funds reach the intended recipients, has a 5-star rating (American Red Cross=3 star) and an overall score of 97.23 out of 100, as opposed to Red Cross 89.33.

BTW, I used to be a big supporter of Oxfam for international support, but it has fallen to a three-star rating. It's good to keep checking back.

I got that 90% expense figure from the website CN you linked. Seriously, am I missing something?

I think so, especially when you compare a three-star charity to a five-star one.

According to Charity Ratings | America's Most Independent, Assertive Charity Watchdog | CharityWatch Americares has an overhead of 36%, so only 64% of their funds go to their programs. And they spend $27 to get $100 of donations. They are given a C+ rating.

Charity Watch mentions that in general the accounting rules for a charity don't always give you the info you think they might. Charities often count gifts in kind, i.e. people donating goods instead of money, at a much higher value than than they are worth so that they can inflate the dollar percentage of their donations.

Charity Watch is a pay for service that digs into all of the IRS filings the charity make to analyze how much of dollar donations to the program are actually going to their programs.

In general it is very hard to tell how effective a charity really is.

BTW Charity Watch rates the American Red Cross as a B+.

Interesting that Red Cross has been called out publicly over their lack of true reporting, but AmeriCares has not? Are you a paying member of Charity Watch, or do they post info for the public. I will check it out. Thanks.

My multi-millionaire Ph.D. BIL gives many thousands of dollars per year to charities. When I told him about AmmeriCares, his response was he's been donating to them for years. One of the things AmeriCares did well with Puerto Rico was get their supplies directly to the people, rather than delivering it to the distribution site, where many supplies languished for lack of transportation. Not that that has anything to do with percent of donations actually going to recipients...

My BIL doesn't give his $ away cavalierly. I'll ask him about his research.

Yes, it's $50 a year. Here is how Charity Watch explains what it does.

CharityWatch Difference | Charity Ratings | Charity Rankings | CharityWatch

It's not just the Red Cross that does this. I've given to a couple of different charities, now I've got enough address labels to last me 3 lifetimes and they're still coming. It's out of control. Some of these charities I've never even heard of.

It is exasperating.

I used to donate to 3-4 different charities each year until I winnowed it down to the one I like the most. I've lived in several different states and overseas in the last 30 years, and I suspect a few of those agencies have spent more money maintaining my info and sending solicitations, gifts, heavy annual reports, etc. than I ever donated in the first place. I always call and ask to be removed from their mailing lists; sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

You'd just hope that charities would be more circumspect and careful with their finances as well as the privacy concerns of their donors.

Amen, I'm done donating!!!

One I just received was from an Indian School. It was an envelope about 12 inches x 8 inches stuffed full. There were very fancy gold trimmed address labels for Christmas, Christmas gift tags, an ink pen decorated like a candy cane, a big calendar, a regular calendar, two note pads, a shopping list pad, and more. It was about 2 inches thick and must have cost about $5.00 or more to send it.